In the first years of the new millennium, two seismic events shook Parisian politics. The first was the election of the quiet, unassuming Socialist candidate, Bertrand Delanoë, as Mayor of Paris in March 2001. The fact that this was the first time the left had won control of the capital since the bloody uprising of the Paris Commune in 1871 was far more of a shock to most Parisians than the fact that he was openly gay – in Paris, a politician's private life has almost always been seen as exactly that. His brief was to end town-hall corruption, tackle crime and instill new pride and energy into the city. Shortly after the election, Delanoë attempted to show he meant business as a reformer. During the summer, when many Parisians turn the city over to tourists, he shut off the riverside quais to traffic, causing apoplexy among Paris's fiercely independent car-users and huge tailbacks on neighbouring roads. The introduction of the euro on 1 January 2002 went relatively smoothly, though price hikes were standard as canny retailers took the opportunity to round up the old prices.France's second cataclysm of the new millennium was the presidential election of spring 2002 and the shock success of the far-right candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen in the first round. Although both the Socialist candidate Lionel Jospin and the right-wing Chirac were seen as rather tired candidates with nothing new to offer, that both would emerge as winners of the first round seemed a foregone conclusion – so much so that many people didn't bother to vote. And so, it was with utter shock and disbelief that the country heard the announcement on April 21 that Jospin had been beaten into third place by Jean-Marie Le Pen, who gained 17 percent of the national vote. Many Parisians were startled to learn that almost ten percent of their supposedly relatively urbane and moderate fellow citizens had also voted for Le Pen. Chirac and Le Pen were now to stand against each other in the final run-off in May. Much media space was devoted to analyzing what had led to such an unexpected result. The left were criticized for putting up too many candidates, thus splitting the vote and depriving Jospin of adequate backing. Many potential voters had abstained – nearly 30 percent – or voted for marginal candidates as a way of protesting against the mainstream parties: Paris's so-called banlieue rouge, the "red suburbs" like St-Denis, have a long history of voting for Communist candidates, but the national success of the Trotskyist Arlette Laguiller, with almost 6 percent of the vote, was unprecedented. It was also felt that Chirac unwittingly helped Le Pen by campaigning on issues of law and order, the very issues that, after immigration, formed the core of Le Pen's manifesto, effectively lending it some legitimacy. The shock result acted like a wake-up call to the nation. There was a sudden renewed interest in politics and large numbers of people took to the streets to protest against Le Pen and his anti-immigration policies. On May 1, 800,000 people packed the boulevards of Paris in the biggest demonstration the capital had seen since the student protests of 1968. Le Pen held his own rally on the same day, but Chirac's victory in the next round was assured, with the Socialists calling on its supporters to vote for Chirac in order to keep Le Pen out. Two weeks later in the run-off, Chirac duly swept the board, winning 82 percent – 90 percent in Paris – by far the biggest majority ever won by a French president. With the parliamentary elections still to come, Chirac's supporters rallied round to create an umbrella grouping of right-wing parties, called the Union for a Presidential Majority, to try and win for Chirac the majority in parliament that he'd failed to secure in 1997. The Socialists, severely shaken by Jospin's earlier defeat, were no match and the Right swept to power with 369 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly. They promptly formalized their coalition group as an official political party, called the UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire), with former prime minister Alain Juppé as its leader. The drama wasn't over yet though. During Paris's Bastille Day parade on July 14, a neo-Nazi sympathizer attempted to assassinate President Chirac. The incident drew attention to the bitterness felt by the far right at having failed to gain any seats in parliament despite winning 13 percent of the vote – in effect six million voters had been disenfranchised. This, together with Le Pen's score of 18 percent in the second round of the presidential poll and the high absention rate, forced the French elite to recognize the anger felt by a sizeable proportion of the electorate, not just against immigration and crime, but also at the remoteness of government and the unaccountability of bureaucrats in Paris.
Pages in section ‘Paris since 2000’: New beginnings.
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